Happy, happy paper week

Oct. 1 marks the beginning of National Newspaper Week, an occasion that, um, had completely slipped my mind until I read a little blurb about it in a treeware version of Access magazine (http://www.accessmagazine.com). Do you suppose it's too late to go shopping? Perhaps a nice Hallmark card, if nothing else...

The celebration, sponsored by the National Newspaper Association, was launched 60 years ago to draw attention to the impact that newspapers have on the everyday lives of their readers. You may see special ads or article in your local paper commemorating the event.

On the Internet, the party looks rather subdued. Access magazine points to a few sites that are marking the occasion, and I turned up a few other links, but for the most part, the week appears to belong to traditional ink-and-paper venues.

Below are a few noteworthy sites, including those cited by Access magazines:

www.mediahistory.com

Here you'll find the Media History Project, a site that aims to promote the study of media history "from petroglyphs to pixels." Among the offerings are an interesting timeline, book reviews, scholarly articles, and an extensive list of links to other media-history sites. Be sure to stop by the collection of fun sites at http://www.mediahistory.com/fun.html

http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/html...

The Newseum's Cybernewseum is hosting exhibits on Pulitzer Prize-winning photography and presidential campaign coverage, among other things. While you're there, visit Free!, an online publication sponsored by the Freedom Forum. It's a site worth bookmarking, if you haven't done so already.

http://griffin.multimedia.edu/~deadmedia...

Science writer Bruce Sterling launched this venture in a "Dead Media Manifesto" in the zine boing boing some years ago, and students at Vancouver Film School have taken it from there, creating a virtual library of communication tools that didn't quite survive the test of time. Check out the "endangered species" section, which includes--among other things--the personal check, the videocassette and the CD, but (thank you, thank you) not the newspaper.

http://www.ncpress.com/NewspaperWeek/aye...

Here you'll find a 1999 piece by Anniston, Ala., publisher and editor Brandt Ayers, pondering the fate of newspapers in the new millennium.

http://ajr.newslink.org/special/

It's not tied to National Newspaper Week, but it couldn't be more appropriate--here's a link to the 18-part series on the state of the American newspaper, project sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and published by the American Journalism Review.

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